Get More Expressive Poses for Your Consistent Midjourney Characters

This post shows you how to improve those poses and add more life to your consistent Midjourney characters. We’ll focus on getting more expressive actions like running, but you can apply this same technique to many other poses.

The Challenge with Poses

You probably already know that creating a consistent character often involves using multiple image references. You take a few images of your character model, copy their image URLs, and add them to the beginning of your prompt. This helps Midjourney understand who the character is.

The issue comes when you try to add a specific action. You might add terms like “running pose” or “sleeping” to the text part of your prompt. While Midjourney tries to incorporate the action, the resulting pose might not look very natural or energetic. For example, a character prompted to run might just have slightly bent legs, far from the dynamic look of someone actually sprinting.

Improve Poses with a Simple Reference Image

The key to getting better poses is to give Midjourney a stronger visual example of the action you want. You do this by adding *another* image reference to your prompt – one that shows the pose itself, independent of your character.

Here’s how it works:

Start with your existing prompt for your consistent character. This includes the URLs of your character’s images and the descriptive text.

Find a good reference image for the pose you need. For a running pose, you could search online for “running animation sprite sheet” or “generic running pose.” Look for an image that clearly shows the movement, even if it’s a simple stick figure or a basic animation frame.

Get the URL of this generic pose image.

Go back to your Midjourney prompt. Paste the URL of the generic pose image at the *very beginning* of your prompt. Make sure there’s a space after this URL.

After the generic pose URL, include all the URLs for your consistent character images, followed by your text prompt. Include the action you want, like “running” or “sleeping.”

By placing the generic pose image URL first, you give it more weight. Midjourney uses this image as a strong guide for how the pose should look, while still applying it to your consistent character based on their reference images.

This method dramatically improves the expressiveness of the poses. A running pose generated this way will look much more like actual running, with dynamic leg and arm positions.

Trying Different Poses

You aren’t limited to just running. You can find generic reference images for many different actions: jumping, sitting, throwing, various expressions, etc. As long as you can find a clear visual example of the pose itself, you can likely use this technique.

Managing multiple image references and refining prompts can become time-consuming, especially if you need many different images for a project like a book. Consider streamlining your workflow. Tools like the

Putting It All Together

Instead of just telling Midjourney your character is “running,” you now show it what “running” should look like with an extra reference image. This simple step leads to much better results for dynamic poses.

Remember the steps:

Start with your character’s image references and prompt text.

Find a generic image showing the desired pose (e.g., a running animation frame).

Add the pose image URL to the front of your prompt.

Generate your image and see the improved pose!

Implementing this technique helps ensure your consistent characters don’t just look the same, but also move and act believably within your scene.

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Conclusion

Getting consistent characters with expressive poses in Midjourney doesn’t have to be difficult. By adding a generic pose reference image to your prompt, you provide Midjourney with the visual information it needs to create more dynamic and realistic actions for your character. Experiment with different pose references to expand your character’s movement repertoire.